Scores of Aftershocks Rumble Through Chile

As Chileans tried to assess the damage from Saturday’s massive 8.8-magnitude quake, scores of aftershocks–one nearly as powerful as Haiti’s devastating Jan. 12 earthquake — shuddered through the country.

About 13 million people live in the area where shaking was strong to severe, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. USGS geophysicist Robert Williams said the initial quake was hundreds of times more powerful than Haiti’s magnitude-7 quake, though it was deeper and cost far fewer lives. More than 50 aftershocks topped magnitude 5.

Saturday’s quake matched a 1906 temblor off the Ecuadorean coast as the seventh-strongest ever recorded in the world.